Aisha Tyler Is a Woman Men Can't Help But Love

The actress talks to us about Archer, video games, married life, and why late night could use more diversity

Aisha Tyler and I are failing at this video game. We are playing Watch Dogs, out this week, in which Tyler voices a character (no, you can't play her, sadly), but she hasn't had much time to practice. It's a complex action game centered on a hacktivist with guns who roams all over Chicago. The sheer number of possibilities is overwhelming. I hand over the controls to Tyler, and already the police are chasing her, because I accidentally killed a few civilians.

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Tyler is used to this kind of thing. The actress, comedian, writer, and talk show host spends her career around guys, doing "guy stuff." It's easy to see why they like being around her, and why she gets so much work. She's funny, gracious, Ivy-educated, and beautiful. (Though she makes jokes at the expense of her height, when I see her in person I think: I've found Wonder Woman.)

In between video games, Tyler talked to us at a Manhattan hotel about playing Lana Kane on Archer, where the show is headed next, dating Archers in her past life, how she spends her weekends, and why late night TV could use a little more diversity. The Late Late Show with Aisha Tyler? CBS, take note.

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ESQUIRE.COM: You seem very busy. You must be excited to get home to LA this weekend.

AISHA TYLER: I will be. It's weird. Sunday has become, like, my one day of rest, so I'll get home Sunday morning and then I'll have a day off. I don't do anything — eat brunch and watch Game of Thrones.

ESQ: You're married.

AT: Yeah, I've been married forever. I married my college boyfriend, so I've been with him since I was a kid.

ESQ: That's sweet. Do you guys play video games?

AT: Yeah, we play games together. But every time I'm about to get attacked I'm like [panicked] "What do I do?" and he's like "Tilt the box! Tilt the box."

ESQ: How much of your life would you say you devote to gaming?

AT: Honestly, now, not as much as I'd like. I feel like I've always been a gamer, and I had a period where I was gaming at a really hardcore level, maybe five years ago. I had a lot of free time.

ESQ: You weren't doing so many TV shows.

AT: Exactly. Now I really try to just play on Sunday afternoons. Sunday is like this entertainment scrum for me, because I've only got a day, one day of fun. So I want to have brunch, and I want to see a movie, and I want to watch Game of Thrones, and I'm trying to watch The Sopranos from the beginning, and I want to play four hours of video games. So, it's, like, as regimented as my work life. Like, "We can watch one episode of The Sopranos, and then we can play video games from 2 to 4, and then we've got to make dinner so that we can watch Game of Thrones and get to bed at 8 so I can be up at 4." So, not half as much as I want to.

Photos by Elizabeth Griffin

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ESQ: You like a lot of the same things men enjoy. Is that something you've been aware of for a while?

I was raised by a single dad, so I've always just kind of liked 'guys' stuff. I think my dad just took me to the things he was interested in.

AT: Well, I was raised by a single dad, so I've always just kind of liked "guys" stuff. I think my dad just took me to the things he was interested in. You know, we would go to the arcade together or he'd drop me off at the arcade and be like, "Don't talk to strangers. Daddy's got a date. I'll get you in two hours." [Laughs] I grew up on the back of a motorcycle — my dad didn't have a car until I was a teenager. And then my closest friend from grade school was a guy. I was best man at his wedding, and he was in my wedding. And then I'm a comedian, so I've always spent most of my time around men. And I like the company of guys. I have a lot of good girlfriends that I really love, but you know, most of my close friends are men.

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ESQ: Do your girlfriends complain, like, "Why aren't you into more girl stuff?"

AT: Probably. I have some girlfriends who just don't ever want me to talk about video games at all. They have no interest in it.

ESQ: What kind of stuff do you do with them?

I have one girlfriend who is dating right now — she's divorced — and she's on Tinder, so we play Tinder. I know that's not a real game, but it's my favorite thing to do.

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AT: Oh, I don't know. Knit, braid each other's hair. [Laughs] No, we don't knit. All my female friends have complex interests, just other interests. We go out to dinner, have a couple cocktails, talk a lot of shit. I have one girlfriend who is dating right now — she's divorced — and she's on Tinder, so we play Tinder. I know that's not a real game, but it's my favorite thing to do, to play Tinder. So we have drinks and we're just like, swiping and talking shit. And then I'm mad when we're out of Tinder pictures. I'm like, "This game doesn't last very long." I want there to be thousands of pictures on Tinder.

ESQ: Are you sad that you didn't get to experience the whole online dating phenomenon?

AT: Not even a little bit. No. I love being married. I love my husband. I think married people always have that thing where they think that the grass is greener on the single side, but all my single friends are like, "Trust me, you don't want to have to actually interact with these people."

ESQ: So I'm a huge Archer fan.

AT: Aww, thank you. That's so sweet.

ESQ: I have a burning question about last season's finale reveal. Why the hell would Lana want to have Archer's baby?

AT: You know, they love each other.

ESQ: But he's such a jerk.

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AT: He's a terrible person, but he's really hot. [Laughs] I think we can all agree that he's crazy hot.

AT: They're an attractive couple. They kind of deserve each other on some level, and you know, he saved her life at the end of season four when they were at the sea lab.

ESQ: He does love her in his own way.

AT: He really loves her. I mean, he just doesn't know who he is.

ESQ: What do you think is going to happen next season? He's trying to get into fatherhood, but it's dicey.

AT: He doesn't know. I mean, he's like a four-year-old. He'll think he's into fatherhood, then a minute later he's into hookers and bourbon again. But I think every time he's been down, she's been there. When he had cancer, she was there for him. She's always been there for him, they've both been there for each other. Whenever you hear her screaming he just comes running. If you go back and watch season four and five, if she screams "Archer," he would literally drop a baby, which he shouldn't do, but he'd go running after her. So, I don't know how he's going to react to being a parent. You know, he almost blacked out at the end of the season, so...

ESQ: Have you ever dated an Archer?

AT: Oh absolutely, who hasn't?

ESQ: Really?

I think I was only attracted to drunken douches before I got married.

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AT: Like a drunken douche? I think we all have that in common as the human race. I think I was only attracted to drunken douches before I got married.

ESQ: Why was that? Because you're a comedian and that's all you encountered?

AT: Probably. They always say some women like to fix people. I don't like to fix people, but you like a challenge, you know what I mean?

ESQ: When I started watching Archer, I wasn't sure if I could get into it, because Archer is such an awful human.

AT: He's like a hot Walter White.

ESQ: Everybody is awful on it. But the more you watch it, the more you start to sympathize with these broken people.

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AT: Yeah, absolutely, which I think is a testament to how great the writing is. I always used to say, early on in the show, when I was trying to help people understand, it's like James Bond meets The Office. It's really an office comedy.

ESQ: Who do you like on Archer?

AT: Pam is my favorite person in the world.

ESQ: She's amazing.

AT: I adore her. I wish I was like her. I think she's incredible.

ESQ: With the coke addiction and everything...

AT: It was a lot of fun, right? I mean, she's an underground fight club champion. She's a drift car driver. She's insane. And she seems most in touch with who she is. She doesn't apologize for who she is, she's fully present. She's almost like a Buddhist in that way. [Laughs]

ESQ: You've reached a certain level of media omnipresence, with Archer and The Talk and your comedy gigs. How do you feel about that?

AT: I don't know. Omnipresence can be a good or bad thing, I suppose. I don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about it. I'm super-grateful. This is a business where you can have a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes the mistake I see people make is thinking that they're always going to be up, and I think that's impossible for anyone. I always wanted to be as busy as possible so that if one job went away I'd still have plenty of other things to do.

ESQ: I don't know if you've been paying attention to the late-night shuffle, but your name has been dropped as a contender for hosting. Is that something that interests you?

AT: I mean, honestly, I don't think there's any comedian who, as a child, doesn't dream of a job like that. But I love what I'm doing now. I love my jobs. I'm lucky that I can say I love my jobs and it's plural. Obviously CBS has been my home and they've been incredible to me. So, it's not like I'm thinking, "Man, I can't wait to change gigs."

ESQ: But you could do late night, easy.

AT: What I'll say is that, right now, I don't have any holes in my schedule. It's pretty full.

ESQ: Do you think, at the very least, late night could use someone who's not another white man?

I brought in more men than they had ever seen on that show before. And it wasn't because they were like, 'I wanna watch a hot girl,' because if I wasn't funny they wouldn't keep watching. It was that I was someone they felt they could spend time with and someone that they wanted to have as a friend.

AT: That's true. I think diversity in television is important. It's not about trying to fill a quota or satisfy some idea of diversity, but I think what diversity brings to any daypart is more eyeballs, just more opportunity. You know, when I took over Talk Soup, the key people that watched it were men. White guys age 18-35, college kids, guys in the military. And when they hired me, they were like, "Are you going to bring in men?" And I brought in more men than they had ever seen on that show before. And it wasn't because they were like, "I wanna watch a hot girl," because if I wasn't funny they wouldn't keep watching. It was that I was someone they felt they could spend time with and someone that they wanted to have as a friend. In late night, the numbers have been diminishing over time because it's not that diverse of an environment creatively. TV always wants more people to be watching.

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ESQ: You've said you felt out of place early in your career among other black comedians because you didn't fit in—

AT: Whatever the stereotype was.

Photos by Elizabeth Griffin

ESQ: Was that hard? Trying to figure out what, I guess, your brand was? I hate that word, but...

AT: Me, too. That's okay, though, because when you say it, I know what you're talking about. The short answer is that I think you just have to be yourself. It sounds like it's an episode of Sesame Street but you can't figure out "What's my angle?" For me, by the time I started doing Talk Soup, I had been doing standup for a long time, so I knew who I was comedically, I knew what made me laugh, and I knew what I could get away with and what I could do. I'm just going to be the best version of me that I could possibly be and be as funny as I possibly can. I've just got to be myself and hopefully people will find me. And my audience did find me.

ESQ: When do you think you made that realization, that an audience found you?

AT: I don't know, probably this morning at 9:30.

ESQ: And who is this Aisha fan?

AT: I wouldn't put a gender on them, but I would say that they're somebody who's a little offbeat, isn't embarrassed — and I think maybe they're the Archer fan, too. Wants to be entertained, but also doesn't want to be talked down to. They like smart entertainment. One thing we do really well on Archer and one thing I've always tried to do in my comedy and my writing and my podcast is to never speak down to my audience. I want to believe they're incredibly intelligent, and they want to be challenged. I remember, when I was writing my book, my editor was like, "Some people aren't going to get these references," and I was like, I don't care, they'll figure it out. When I read a book, I don't want to get everything right away. I love it when I read a book and I'm like, "Man, I learned some shit." Those are the writers I love. You know, Chuck Klosterman or... Who wrote Zone One?

ESQ: Colson Whitehead.

AT: Yeah, Colson Whitehead. I love it when I come across a word I don't know. And I would never treat my audience like they weren't smart enough to come along with me. [Archer creator]Adam Reed and I made up this word like two Comic-Cons ago when people were asking us how to describe Archer, and we said it was a combination of smart and filthy: smilthy.

ESQ: There's a lot of smart. You guys make jokes about sentence structure.

AT: Oh yeah, there's like Keats and Browning references.

ESQ: And then the Burt Reynolds references...

I don't want to be pandered to, so I try not to pander.

AT: And then dick jokes, dick jokes, dick jokes. I talk to grown-ups who are out to have a good time and they want to be spoken to in a different way. I don't want to be pandered to, so I try not to pander.

ESQ: All right, do you want to play a little?

AT: Oh no, it's going to end terribly for both of us.

[Photographer takes pictures during the game.]

AT: Are you taking pictures? Let me put on some lipstick. I just want to make sure that they're not like, "That man looks slightly like Aisha Tyler."

ESQ [at the game]: What's going on? He was just trying to rob that lady.

AT: Get him, get him, get him! Shoot him! Where's your gun? You're supposed to get him! Where did he go? He's over there. Don't shoot her. There he is. Is that him?

ESQ: I think we lost him.

AT: What a dick. There he is! Get him! Gotta run! Run, run, run! Oh, I love it. You're going to kill so many civilians. Run across the street!

ESQ: I don't know how. You try. [Hands over controller]

AT: Mother father. I am not running quickly at all. And the cops are shooting at me, so thanks a lot for that! I want to point out, for the record, that this is not my fault that everyone's afraid of me, because I did not kill a couple people the other day.

ESQ: That was me.

AT: Was that you?

ESQ: Earlier I was killing civilians.

AT: Well, you're not a very nice person.

ESQ: It was mostly unintentional.

AT: You were just firing wildly?

ESQ: Yeah. In Grand Theft Auto you can kill anyone.

AT: Yeah, that's why I don't play Grand Theft Auto. I like to be nice. I want to be a hero. I want to save people.

ESQ: Or just kill zombies.

AT: Or just kill zombies, because they deserve it, because they're already dead and they can't feel it. They don't have feelings.